Resource identifiers

Digital Object Identifiers

Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) are persistent identifiers which can be used to consistently and accurately reference digital objects and/or content. The DOIs provide a way for the ADS resources to be cited in a similar fashion to traditional scholarly materials. More information on DOIs at the ADS can be found on our help page.

Citing this DOI

DOIs should be the last element in a citation irrespective of the format used. The DOI citation should begin with "doi:" in lowercase followed by the DOI with no spaces between the ":" and the DOI.

doi:10.5284/1000022

DOIs can also be cited as a persistent link from another Web page. This is done by appending the DOI Resolver with the DOI. This would look like:

http://dx.doi.org/10.5284/1000022

However, if it is possible it is best to hide the URL in the href property of the <a> tag and have the link text be of the form doi:10.5284/1000022. The HTML for this would look like:

Interactive Map:

ArcIMS is slowly being abandoned by ESRI, so maintenance of the ArcIMS maps is becoming extremely difficult. We have decided to migrate this map interface to a more sustainable software stack using non-proprietary software. We will begin the migration to GeoServer and OpenLayers as soon as possible, but until then we apologise for any inconvenience.

Help for using the Interactive Map

An Interactive Map has been provided to enable you to examine the various spatial data compiled throughout the survey using basic WebGIS tools. To begin using the map click the button labelled 'Switch On' found in the box above.

Groups/Layers:

Each map contains several layers grouped under the following headings:

Archaeology

Plan Elements

Metrics

Survey Data

Base Map

Layers can be selected either singularly or as a group. Toggling the group visibility icon will display/hide every layer featured within the specific group. To display a single layer within a group, the group must be opened and the relevant layer can then be enabled/disabled by selecting the layer visibility icon . However, only one Base Map layer can be displayed at any one time.

A layer can be made active be either clicking the relevant radio button or by clicking the layer title. The layer will become highlighted when it is active.

The Group/Layer panel can be hidden by clicking on the vertical grey button marked with an arrow. The arrow button will slide toward the left of the map area and the map will be re-rendered filling the whole area. Clicking the arrow button again will show the Layer/Group panel. When the Layer/Group panel is hidden/shown the active tool will be deselected.

The various tools found in the tool panel on the right of the map allow a further element of interactivity. There is a handy text tip next to each button on the interface to explain what each button is for, but on this page we go into a little bit more detail:

Zoom in - Click on the map to zoom in (the map will be centred on your mouse click).

Zoom out - Click on the map to zoom out (the map will be centred on your mouse click).

Zoom to full extent - Zoom to the extent of all the layers within the map - this is a quick way of getting back to the map's starting position

Pan - Click on the map and drag it in any direction to change the area of view.

Identify - Click on a feature on the active layer to see the data attached to it. The data will appear in a popup window.

Rectangle select - Use your mouse to draw a rectangle on the screen to select a group of features within the active layer. The associated data from these features will be displayed in a popup window and the selected features will be highlighted.

Clear selection - If you have any features selected/highlighted, this tool will unselect them.

Show legend - Show a map legend of archaeological features in a popup window. Point data and basemap information is omitted.

Be patient! Every time you zoom, pan, refresh or query the map, a request is sent to the server and new image is created and delivered to your desktop. Whilst this request is being sent, do not try and send extra requests as this will produce error messages. Your browser can only send and receive one GIS request at a time so don't push it!

Discussion:

Early history of the town

Caerwys is one of the lesser-known Edwardian new towns of north Wales. It lies away from the coast, high in the hills between Rhuddlan and Flint at around 180m above sea level. A charter of October 1290 made the 'king's town' of Caerwys a 'free borough', and made 'the men there dwelling free burgesses', with a guild merchant, 'and all the liberties and free customs of a free borough as the king's burgesses of Aberconewey [Conwy] and Rothelan [Rhuddlan] and other boroughs in Wales have'.[114] This wording shows that a settlement was there by then, with 'men there dwelling'. Ian Soulsby notes that the 'men of Kayroys' are referred to in 1242 and that St Michael's church was also there beforehand, the rector of Caerwys being mentioned in November 1284 with receipt of payment for sixty shillings 'for ecclesiastical damages in the Welsh war'.[115] As evidence for an existing Welsh settlement there, Maurice Beresford points to the fact that in 1244 'the church of Caerwys was chosen by the Pope to be the meeting place of two Welsh abbots appointed to judge whether David had concluded his treaty with Henry III under duress or not', as well as a nearby 'house of the princes'.[116] A list of taxpayers of 1292 records 43 of which 39 had Welsh names.[117] This together with the earlier significance of the place points to Caerwys being a Welsh town conferred the status of an English borough by its charter in 1292, thus bringing it into Edward's network of new towns.

Some indication of the relative prosperity of Caerwys for the first few years after 1300 is provided by royal accounts. The 'vill of Caerwys' provided just over £5 per year in rents, far less than the nearby Flintshire new towns of Rhuddlan (around £30) and Flint (around £36).[118] The town had a market and an annual fair, the latter held on the feast of the Decollation of St John the Baptist.[119] It seems, though, that Caerwys was always in the shadow of its larger neighbours of Rhuddlan and Flint. Latterly, by the middle of the fourteenth century, even the town's mayor was the constable of Rhuddlan.[120]

Design and plan of the town

Maurice Beresford noted the 'full rectilinear plan' of Caerwys, with its 'small market place'.[121] The town consists of a grid of streets. Three streets run in a north-south direction, and four run east-west. Not all the streets are the same width. The widest of them form an overall cross-shape, with the market place at the centre of the cross, a small square cut into the north-east corner of the intersection of the town's main streets, South Street/North Street and High Street/Water Street. The cross-shape and grid plan of the street pattern gives the town plan an impression of regularity in form. This is heightened by the near-equal spacing of the east-west streets, producing rectangular-shaped street-blocks of roughly the same dimensions. These streets are also arranged more precisely in parallel to each other than the two outermost north-south streets, which instead are angled so that their alignments converge together slightly. The town's regular form seems to diminish therefore towards its perimeter edges. Within the rectangular-shape street-blocks are two lines of building plots, but the plot-patterns along the two main street axes are denser than those along the minor streets. This may be because the two main streets had the highest demand for property, and hence greater concentration of population and sub-division of burgess properties. Alternatively it may indicate that the town was developed and perhaps laid out in two stages.

The town's initial plan development is most likely represented by the main cross of streets, with roughly equal sized plots fronting each in all four directions.[122] Of the two streets, the dominant axis is formed by High Street/Water Street, as plots front this street continuously all along its length. This is in contrast to North Street/South Street, where plot-frontages are instead 'interrupted' halfway along its length by those fronting High Street/Water Street. Nevertheless, the similar size and form of the plots along both of these main cross-streets suggests that they were established at the same time, and earliest on, to the north-east of the church, which stands behind the plot frontages in a position rather aloof from the town. The orientation of High Street/Water Street also suggests there were two stages of development in the town. The two main streets do not intersect at ninety degrees, and if examined closely the alignment of High Street/Water Street does not match up exactly with the two streets to its north and south, Drover's Lane/Holywell Road, and Chapel Street. Curiously, though, these two secondary streets both have the same alignment. This makes it look as if they were added in later, to further develop the town by facilitating property development behind the existing plot frontages on the two main cross-streets. This would also account for the way that plots on these secondary streets do not run continually along their whole length (in contrast again to those plots that front all along High Street/Water Street), for they clearly abut the rear of plots fronting onto North Street and South Street. The later insertion of these two secondary streets is suggested also by the way Chapel Street stops at South Street, unlike Drover's Lane and Holywell Road which extend across North Street. The church and its grounds perhaps stood in the way of a street to parallel that of Drover's Lane, thus spoiling the overall symmetry of the town's street-pattern.

From studying the shape and plan of the street and plot patterns of Caerwys a model of its development emerges. The earliest, pre-urban feature is probably the church and an associated settlement (earthworks are visible in the field to the south of the church). This is close to Maes Mynan which, Maurice Beresford points out, 'was a house of the Welsh princes'.[123] The eccentric location of the church suggests it was not part of the town plan as it was originally conceived. Instead a new town was laid out to the north east of it, on a cross-plan with a small market square, with regular-sized plots fronting each of the two main streets accentuating the cross shape of the town. This may even be reflected in the name of the place ('crwys' being cross in Welsh), and probably existed before the town's charter of 1292 - the place inhabited prior to the town becoming an enfranchised borough. The symbolic significance of a cross-shape was surely not lost on its creator, or the town's inhabitants. It was probably laid out under Welsh lordship rather than Edward's, and may date from earlier in the thirteenth century when Caerwys was a meeting place for the two Welsh bishops who came there to discuss Henry III's treaty.[124] A second phase in the town's formation then followed with two new street-alignments being added in to provide land for further property development behind the main street-frontages. The most likely time when this occurred is when the 'king's town' was made a 'free borough' by the charter of 1292. These later streets may never have been as well built-up as the town's earlier two main streets. The final result however was a town with a grid-plan form. The chance of it being based upon some Gascon bastide thus seems remote to say the least.

The town as it is today

Caerwys is a still a small settlement many would describe as a village rather than a town. The secondary streets are now built up with twentieth-century housing, but there are earlier buildings along the two main streets, mostly with eighteenth or nineteenth century façades. Some earlier buildings stand along High Street, and some of the plot boundaries are themselves very substantially built, particularly those that form the rear of properties along High Street and Water Street, which are visible particularly on South Street. In 2001 the population of Caerwys stood at around 1000.[125]

Flintshire Ministers' Accounts, 1328-1353, ed. D.L. Evans (Flintshire Historical Society record series 2, 1929), p.xl: 'the constable of Rhuddlan, who was ipso facto mayor of Rhuddlan, [was] described as the mayor of the vill of Caerwys'.

Beresford, New Towns, p.549.

Field survey carried out in 2004 revealed that the plots were around 130-140 feet in depth (40m). No common or standard plot width could be identified. See 'Data downloads'.

Beresford, New Towns, p.48.

Beresford, New Towns, p.48.

This is an estimate. The population of the ward of Caerwys - which covers a more extensive area than the settlement - was nearly 2500 in 2001.